My colleague Novak Rogic and I are presenting at the BCNet conference tomorrow on our shared obsession, which though it lacks a snazzy catchphrase essentially comes down to a distributed publishing model. Content is created in whatever environment the author feels most comfortable with — so long as it generates full RSS feeds. Content is then syndicated, maybe remixed with other feeds, and then republished wherever the readers are, in as many places as is desirable.

This miniscreencast is something of an experiment in content development in itself. From the idea, to the planning, to the recording, to the writing of this blog post, the total time investment was something like twenty minutes. Rather than wait for the perfect time to materialize, I decided to just bash the sucker out. During recording, I had a firm time limit enforced by an impending appointment, which may account for the frantic tone. I hope the result isn’t incoherent. Novak and I definitely share a vision, but our record at getting others on the electric kool-aid syndication bus isn’t as successful as I’d like. Maybe we are just tripping in a self-reinforcing collaborative hallucination. That’s usually my kind of party, and I’ll wig out on it indefinitely unless an intervention happens.

Great stuff, Brian. The “small technologies, loosely joined” paradigm continues to grow, and the screencast is a great example of it (and short enough that I could show it to teachers in its entirety before their eyes start to glaze over).

Great screen cast Brian! Rest assured I’ve circulated it amongst the troops at EDTeC to a very positive response. Methinks your blurb on WebCT was what perked most peoples’ curiosity here, but I’m hopeful we’ll start to get more people onboard the social software band wagon over here.

I’ve been meaning to ask you, what sort of reception is most common amongst the academics you deal with – positive, neutral, negative? I’m interested in seeing and hearing more about your approach – and that of your colleagues – because I’d like to see these technologies more widely adopted at UNSW. I’m just not sure where to start.

Consider this more of a personal passion/quest than an official one for the moment.

Also, out of curiosity what screencast program did you use? I’d be interested in getting my hands on a copy to use myself.

Mike, it happens here too, you mention a CMS and suddenly this stuff gains credibility. I don’t think I can generalise about reception — it really depends on the person. I’m fortunate to be at a large university, even if the percentage isn’t super-high, there’s a reasonable number of actual users.

And generally, the reception depends on what characteristics of social software you are describing. Ease of use and flexibility always goes over well, the distribution of content management less so, public openness is almost always controversial.

Wow, you really need to ditch that background music. I couldn’t even make it through the entire screencast because it was far too loud and distracting..(and that fact that at one part it conatined people speaking random words def. didn’t help the matter). Maybe its just me..? But might be something you want to consider for future screencasts 🙂

John – thanks for the feedback, you’re not the first person to make that point. Then again, in person I’m almost always cranking music that is far more unpleasant. It might be why I lead some a lonely existence.

I would have mixed the background music lower – but this was a quickie one take job.